An avatar appears to have entangled himself in a legal dispute after allegedly infringing trade marks by launching an art gallery called ‘SLart’ on Linden Lab’s ‘Second Life’ 3D virtual world.
Linden Lab have claimed the right to use the mark "SL" and have informed the avatar that he can not use it unless it is followed by a space and two generic nouns. Meanwhile an artist and publisher has issued proceedings against the avatar and Linden Lab for infringement of its registered US "SLART" trade mark.
One of the first questions to be answered by the US courts, is the extent to which their jurisdiction covers actions in cyberspace. Second Life’s terms of service state that the relationship between users and Linden Labs is subject to US law, however the extent to which this has effect in practice is questionable, especially when the dispute involves a third party (for example the avatar). It could be argued that because Linden Labs' servers are based in the US, the applicable law is in fact US law. However, this would not always make sense, for example if someone in Australia wanted to sue an individual in Japan for online infringement of intellectual property.
It will be interesting to see how much jurisdiction the US courts think they have over the virtual world!
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